A daily dose of odds and sods, some interesting, some bizarre, some funny, some thought provoking items which I have stumbled across the web. All to be taken with a grain of daily salt!!

Sunday, March 16

Swedish dads steer clear of paternity leave

This is quite curious, why on earth would you steer clear of paternity leave? I would have leapt at the very idea of spending months on end with my little babies when they were born. But not so in the case of the Swedes. I quote:

Swedish fathers enjoy one of the most generous paternity leave policies in the world but few dads take advantage of the opportunity, with mothers in gender-equal Sweden still leading the charge in childcare.

Fathers take on average only 20 percent of the 16 months of paid parental leave offered in Sweden to either mums or dads, according to Statistics Swede—a skimpy average that has sparked a broad debate over how to encourage more fathers to take the paid time off and reduce inequalities in the home.

"You have to ask yourself what it is that pushes most women to stay at home, and one of the reasons is that the person who earns the most is often the one who is going to stay at work," Sweden's Gender Equality Minister Nyamko Sabuni told AFP. Women are over-represented in low-income jobs, such as teachers or nurses, and on average earn 84 percent of the average male salary, according to Statistics Sweden.

There you go, you got the answer, economics again, people want to get more money and whoever earns less (in this case women) gets to stay at home while daddy (who presumably earns more) gets to go to work.